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Doom Creator Says Direct3D Is Now Better Than OpenGL
arcticstoat writes "First-person shooter godfather and OpenGL stickler John Carmack has revealed that he now prefers Direct3D to OpenGL, saying that 'inertia' is the main reason why id Software has stuck by the cross-platform 3D graphics API for years. In a recent interview, the co-founder of id Software said, 'I actually think that Direct3D is a rather better API today.' He added, 'Microsoft had the courage to continue making significant incompatible changes to improve the API, while OpenGL has been held back by compatibility concerns. Direct3D handles multi-threading better, and newer versions manage state better.'"
It's been true for almost 10 years. In fact Microsoft's support for DirectX has always been better than what OpenGL had. Microsoft made it easy to use with all their programming tools and languages and had a great documentation. The API was always cleaner too. There were tons of books written for DirectX. This is the area Microsoft handles extremely well - their Visual Studio development environment is the best IDE on the market and they create great tools for developers. Their mobile development tools kick Apple's and Google's (C#, Visual Studio and Silverlight against Java...).
It would be nice to see open source community wake up and start developing a competitor, as just now Microsoft is the driving force that innovates new technologies for PC and Xbox360 graphics and gaming. But for once it looks like the fact they're the only one doing so isn't slowing them down - they do a good job.
...and the API is actually quite small and simple.
WebGL is awesome and simple. Moves all the "hard" work into creating shaders, which is where it belongs.
Is Slashdot not for nerds anymore? I never thought I'd see the day when John Carmack was described on Slashdot as "Doom creator".
I never thought I'd see the day John Carmack would admit DirectX is better then OpenGL. I remember since the early days of doom and quake how they trumpeted OPENGL as the end all and be all of the flagship games. I guess miracles do happen!
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
"Microsoft had the courage to continue making significant incompatible changes to improve the API" apply this to politics and it gets a little scary... oh... wait.
http://www.quasarcr.com/
Pretty sure you don't need to refer to Carmack as the 'Doom Creator' I mean, this is /. for crying out loud ;)
We, the citizens of Mesquite, TX, thank you John Carmack for revealing the obvious. Oh, and Sony makes shitty stereos.
I think John has a good point - the Quake engine has drove a lot of games, along with the Unreal engine. Valve's flagship, the Source engine, is a fork of the quake engine if memory serves. Back in the day, Quake 2 and Unreal / Unreal Tournament had OpenGL support, but that's around the point that I started seeing more games using DirectX, and now we have the big commercial engines using it exclusively that other developers license for their own games.
Would DirectX have this market if more of the big engines used OpenGL?
... is how old Carmack looks now! I still remember him from the Doom days and I haven't seen a picture since. Came as a bit of a shock.
They work with the GPU manufacturers. Basically when new GPUs are in development, so is the new DirectX. So MS has a chat with nVidia and AMD. They tell the GPU makers the kind of things they want, the GPU makers tell them the kind of things there hardware is going to have, and they are able to come to a standard that everyone supports. That is why when new GPUs come out they support all the features of the new DX. It isn't some amazing coincidence. Also it is proper support, a single standard that works well with the abilities the cards have. You write your DX driver, and everything works.
OpenGL functions in much more of a lagging capacity. New video cards come out, and then it gets support for whatever it is they bring to the table sometime later. Khronos doesn't seem to go out and engage the vendors during development and try to have OpenGL ready to meet the next gen cards. Also their strategy often seems to be "just use extensions for it," which means that you can have differences between vendors for how things work.
I predict every comment that doesn't take issue with Carmack's statement will be modded down. So...
OpenGL is obviously and demonstrably better than Direct3D. Not only is it open, it's Open! Direct3D only has ONE of those letters, and it's not even the important one - it's only the "e"!
#DeleteChrome
Well the interesting comment in that article is the one from AMD.
'The actual innovation in graphics has definitely been driven by Microsoft in the last ten years or so,' explained AMD's GPU worldwide developer relations manager, Richard Huddy.
One would imagine that a company that develop and make GPU accelerators would be the innovator in the field but apparently AMD is fine with being in Microsoft shadow.
Carmack changed his mind some years ago. This report is quite late.
However, the title of the magazine is "Custom PC". It is worth keeping in mind that if the PC and Xbox are the only platforms you are targeting then DirectX is a valid choice for development technology.
Otherwise, you are better off developing in OpenGL, where you can target PCs, PS3, iPhone, iPad, Mac OS X, WebGL, industrial Unix (not all 3D apps are games, dontchaknow?). The only thing you can't do much with is the Xbox (technically possible, but deliberately closed by Microsoft).
Also, the pace of change in OpenGL has picked up tremendously with the stewardship of the Khronos group. So OpenGL is starting to have parity in features again after lagging for some time (plus, you can get those features on Windows XP for those still on it).
... Because this ain't an apples-for-apples comparison, IMHO nobody got the chance to do a real-world face-off between DX11 and GL4.1 yet. My chips are still all-in on OpenGL, probably because it's cross-platform.
just curious, anyone here actually writing code for DirectX or OpenGL? i've written for both and I cannot agree with Mr. Carmack though obviously his knowledge is thousands of times my own. DirectX is an MS API and all that that implies. OpenGL is pretty lightweight by comparison and (like someone else already said) moves a lot of the work into shaders with GLSL where it should be.
So back in the Doom days, there was no such thing as DirectX. OpenGL was all their was. Of course it was high end cards only, no consumer stuff.
So move on up to 1996 and the 3dfx Voodoo comes out. It couldn't support full OpenGL, but Glide was based on OpenGL and it brought real 3D to consumers. DirectX was at 3.0 at this point and had no 3D. Glide, or a subset of OpenGL with a wrapper (how Quake did it) was it.
DirectX 5 came out in mid 1997 and did have 3D, but it was somewhat basic. I mean it could support what consumer cards could do, but lacked a lot that OpenGL had. Still no real comparison.
However by 2001, DirectX 8 was out and DX was showing some real competition to OpenGL. nVidia had been doing DX and OGL as native APIs for their cards for some time, and both ran just as fast. Also now the cards had programmable vertex and pixel stages, just like the high end pro card, and in fact nVidia was selling their consumer hardware in the pro market as Quadros.
From there, DX just started pulling further and further ahead. DX10 was a major update and brought some cool new GPU features, like fully unified shaders. Support for it was not a lot on the software side since it required Vista and games have to deal with older computers, but the GPU makers loved it. OpenGL was not fast in terms of catching up.
DX11 pushes things forward again, and again OpenGL is playing catchup and doing it in a poor fashion with extensions. Not just new graphics features either, but things like support for real multi-threaded and multi-tasking rendering. The ability to treat a GPU much like a CPU and task switch on it and so on.
Then of course there's DirectCompute, part of DirectX. GPGPU integrated in to the API and the same for all vendors. Of course there is OpenCL, a similar idea, but it is not integrated as DC is in to DX.
So back when Carmack was an OpenGL fan, it was because it was the best. However it isn't anymore and as things have changed so has his opinions.
Richard M. Stahlman says vi is now better than emacs.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Microsoft had the courage to continue making significant incompatible changes to improve the API, while OpenGL has been held back by compatibility concerns.
*tweak*
Apple had the courage to continue making significant incompatible changes to improve OSX, while Windows has been held back by compatibility concerns.
:)
How do you get around, dragging such a huge penis everywhere?
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I don't think OpenGL is going anywhere due to WebGL in the browser, and increasing cross platform development for Apple and console hardware.
You too are making the mistake that your chosen toolchain and methods are automatically more productive for everyone else. Therefore, you too should "shut the fuck up". Different people are productive in different ways and through different methods.
I don't know about him, but my method is a little wheeled cart that I push in front of me.
But seriously, all you need is syntax highlighting, searching and a debugger. I've used grep, gedit, and GDB for a long time and they are so quick, I don't have to worry about an IDE that crashes or hangs up randomly.
isnt correct; the article seems to contradict himself. carmack says direct3d is better because of incompatible updates made to the API, where as OP says its multi-platform performance is stellar? let me just load up a copy in my FreeBSD...yeah, that doesnt work.
his opinion also seems to contradict his own drive toward open source. if the thing you like only works with one vendor, how do you anticipate ever FLoSS'ing your code?
Good people go to bed earlier.
But I'm going to say that Direct3D has been better than OpenGL since Direct3D version 9. I've been waiting for Carmack to say the same.
And by "better" I mean better to the average gamer and the average developer making games for the most popular platform and OS that is taking advantage of modern GPU features for a modern game.
OpenGL was left in the dust a long time ago.
Why is this surprising? He has always struck me as a very smart, pragmatic engineer. If brand x widgets are now better than brand y, any good engineer will switch. His goals seem to be fairly obvious: he wants to build the fastest, most efficient graphic engine he can so he is going to pick the best tools available to do so.
His honesty is refreshing in a world of shills, ego based flame-wars, and corporate astroturfing.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
http://www.quakewiki.net/archives/qweek.planetquake.gamespy.com/034.htm
Greetings Mr. McGee. I'm Steve Ballmer from Microsoft and I was wondering if id Software would reconsider its stand regarding Direct3D. We have made vast improvements to the API that we think you would appreciate. Do you think you could get Mr. John Carmack on the line?
tokasd;kjs/;gklsd.msdf;g';asdsd
this is actually the reason why ye olde time programmers keep away from women and are in such scarce supply. Any erection causes irreversible instant death as all blood is suddenly evacuated from their body into their bulbous appendage. A few die off every year or so, but never as bad as when the internet first caught on, there was a relative extinction event when that occured due to the prevalence of adult entertainment...
I love to slaughter the english language.
If erections last longer than Eternal September, please consult a doctor.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
How do you get around, dragging such a huge penis everywhere?
I have mine carried by a custom-built robot, programmed in assembly, using punch-cards with the holes punched out by the telekinetic power of my...
Robot: EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE!
...
People Screaming: The robot has gone mad, why has this abomination been allowed to live?
I've got to go...
People Screaming: Oh the humanity, look what it's doing to the incredibly well-endowed man with the stack of punch cards!
I'm sorry for mister doom creator, becouse directx was better platform for windows for a couple of years. If he just noticed then 'hey, man! you're getting old, time to die!'.
directx is sluggish. i am never seeing a wholesome and clean cycle with direct x games. some where better than others but still... but they are also less (noticeable) jerking when coming under 25 fps carmack is only writing for directx because windows destroyed opengl. that way, he met directx more closely...
How do you get around, dragging such a huge penis everywhere?
The trick is finding a good holster for your penis.
It's tougher than you might think - unfortunately your mom's time is spread pretty thin.
Bow-ties are cool.
Really. I had to check if it was somebody else other than Carmack!
You know what you just did, /. ?? From now on, heck, even tonight, a Friday night, no less, he will have to introduce himself in parties as 'Doom Creator' instead of waiting for either the awed silence that usually follows the mention of his name, or the alternative THE CARMACK?!!?
Did we just fall into Digg, or something...Or did the submitter just want us to *feel* old all of a suddeGET OFF MY LAWN!!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YreEwtV7D0 (part 1 so far).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I'm not going to pretend I don't almost exclusively use vim for my development to argue against being stuck in "old ways."
But there is not a person on the planet who will be able to convince me that typing commands in gdb is faster and more productive than using a visual debugger, even for all its power and scriptability.
30 years ago the occasional nerd probably argued that they were more productive using ed than that newfangled text editor vi.
Geez, if I were an OpenGL developer and Carmack started talking about things that OpenGL should implement to make his game engines work better, I'd be like "Yes sir, Mr. Carmack!" Seriously, those game engines are what's keeping people using OpenGL in the first place. It's too bad that ID software doesn't have the resources to fork that shit and develop it to suit their needs. I'm sure that it would be better.
It's pretty obvious that the smartest Microsoft engineers are working on game-related projects, and it's smart. Microsoft might be watching its empire erode, but games are a field where their dominance might actually be growing. DirectX is a big part of that, and the Kinect has also really stirred the pot. Lots of comments here are to the effect that Carmack is stating what has been obvious to everyone else for years. Yes, Carmack was a true believer, and his (late) heresy is a sign that MS alternatives in some fields are just ... quixotic. It's not quite like RMS saying that he really should just start using Windows because it works better, but it's about 10% of the way there.
This is like arguing about which font is best for printing books. It has absolutely nothing to do with how good a game is, which is what Carmack or anyone in his position should be most concerned about. An extra 10 frames per second or the relative ease of implementing a shader means shit unless as a programmer you're incompetent and/or lazy. If OpenGL or DirectX were used in prolonged scientific simulations for which the efficient use of hardware had a direct impact on time/cost, then it would be meaningful. Add to that the ever-spreading dominance of Android and browser-based games and it begins to sound foolish to use such a restrictive API. When you end up having to port your DirectX code for every project anyway, how do those little advantages stack up then?
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
Look, dipshit, Borland Turbo 4.5 is the best IDE ever.
Is id Software still a player in the game market? I mean there is Doom and Quake, but they are really old. Are they still developing? If not, then why is their opinion on the merits of DirectX or OpenGL that important.
Personally, I've worked on a few commercial and shareware games that had the choice of DirectX or OpenGL and although DirectX was somewhat easier to code for, the decision was to use OpenGL. My understanding of the issue was that the somewhat increased development time was offset by including the potentially broader non-Microsoft market. While it is true that other operating systems have just a fraction of the market share that Windows has, it is really an untapped market and being a player in that market, with minimal competition was seen as beneficial.
(Because of NDAs I am not at liberty to state what these games were, so don't even ask).
Seriously, once DirectX had support for hardware transform and Lighting it had more or less caught up.
OpenGL has a slight advantage in ease of setup, and for some applications the fact that it's state based works in the developers favour, but there's not a lot in it. Microsoft has been working very closely with the hardware manufacturers and making sure there's good support for features. The fact that there's a single company with a strong commitment to promoting their API has meant some serious leadership. The OpenGL consortium has been crippled from time to time by various members demanding certain compromises.
CARRRMAACK!! If you make new games 'doze-only, we'll never forgive you! Because of its terrible lock-in and non-cross-platform, non-vendor-neutral ways, DirectX is not a valid or viable choice for anyone. Last time I looked at photos and specs, GL 4 was better than DX11. I do hope GL looks at itself and makes it more awesome still by sacrificing compatibility a little. But don't break anything. If built with GL3, GL3 it needs to use. Etc. Not that it didn't already... GL4 is awesome. Shame it only works on Fermi GPUs and above. We on 300 or below are stuck with the still-awesome GL3.2. With WebM becoming more popular and DX being locked in to one platform of tens or hundreds now (including consoles, phones etc) and GL working on almost all of them, working with DX now seems stupid.
I guess it's still effective in doing its job.
I love free software and all the good things it brought us, but I see this happening in lots of projects. It seems like stability and having this 'pure and perfect core' - the thing about the most recent OpenGL and its dependence on extensions for new features comes to mind - is so important that real breakneck-speed, risk-taking innovation doesn't seem to get its turn in open source development, but is rather kept at a distance.
I guess that has its place, and maybe is the reason that in the server world Linux is so big.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Not really. I personally find the autocomplete features in Visual Studio insanely useful.
Most of my university programming was done in C/C++/Java in a Solaris environment. I run a Linux desktop at home and still do a decent amount of tinkery programming there, and I do maintain some PHP code at work. At home, I tend to use Emacs. At work, on Windows, I tend to use Scite for PHP.
Those, compared to Visual Studio, are downright painful to code in. If I need to find the name for a random function I have to pull out a quick reference or go to a website. If I want to see all the functions available under an object in C#, I just type the name plus period and then wait a half a second. A little list of all of them pops up next to the cursor. Then once I type the function name, boom - little scrollable list of all the different overload options pops up for that function. All this is done live, which means it even works for some random OSS library I might be used (ie, I've been using MigraDoc and PdfSharp a lot lately, and it's great there).
Beyond that, the whole RAD environment is just amazing for getting events associate with GUI actions. Doing all that by hand in code isn't that difficult, but man oh man is it TEDIOUS. Why waste the effort when I can double click on a button on a form and it automatically generates a function the runs on the click event?
For GUI applications, I've simply seen NOTHING that rivals Visual Studio. Now if I'm coding something without a UI (ie, a script that just processes numbers or does backend work), then it's not as valuable, but overall, while I like USING Linux more, I like developing in Windows a lot more.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
That may have been the worst segue into a "your mom" joke that I've ever seen.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
In short, "Commander Keen creator says Direct3D is now better than OpenGL" is an argument from authority. Arguments from authority are fallacious since both the reasoning and the premises of the argument may be wrong, and that the argument was made by a famous person doesn't change that.
What you are missing is that the pro-Direct3D argument being made today is from one of the most enthusiastic proponents of OpenGL of the past, one of the most critical of Direct3D in the past. Also a person of great technical skill in the actual domain being discussed. Its not an argument from authority. Its an argument from experience and expertise, an argument enhanced by open mindedness as suggested by a radical change of opinion as the underlying circumstances changed radically.
Frankly, I don't have the knowledge to comment on the technical aspects of this topic. But as far as philosophical commentary, I might suggest that if there is merit to Carmack's statements, then OpenGL people should sit up and take notice.
This reminds me of XFree86. Does anyone remember those old farts? For years and years, all we got from them was slow, incremental adjustments and changes. Sure there were improvements but they were so slow in coming and they never seemed to want to commit to anything that looked like a drastic change. Finally, people rebelled and X.org was born and the Linux distros out there haven't looked back. X.org made some great changes from the git-go even if recent improvements seem to have slowed down a bit lately.
When it comes to display technologies, there is clearly plenty of room for improvement as we go. Frankly, for the desktop, I would rather like to see a departure from the apparently network oriented display model and over in the direction of the hardware driver type model. (Wouldn't it just be awesome if someone could create a Linux display system that could use Windows driver binaries in a wrapper much the way certain network device drivers have been in the past?) I know there has been talk about such graphical interfaces in the past and I am unsure what came of it. I really don't know a lot about these things, but I do know what is lacking and I know that for my purposes, I don't need a networked, multi-user oriented display system on my laptop... just a quick, high-performance display with great 3D graphics.
So taking into consideration what Carmack says, what could this hint at in terms of what direction Desktop Linux should go? Sure Server Linux should keep X.org and stuff like that -- it has its place without question. And if a new model for graphical display results in being directly compatible with DirectX? Wow, what a neat thing? (I would be afraid of bringing in Windows vulnerabilities and instabilities... would that necessarily be the case? I know with the Windows driver model with things running at ring-0, there is huge potential for big ugly crashes...)
Anyway...
Irony is that he said that OpenGL is better - when his opinion mattered.
It's not that OpenGL now, with the mobile gaming on rise, really cares about what anybody says.
Or PC gaming, in its perpetual state "it'll get better with the next patch," is now being held back by the choice of 3D API.
Back then his words mattered. Now they are not.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Just to makes things clear:
While there is one open source implementation of the OpenGL standard (mesa3d), OpenGL itself does not have anything to do with open source.
OpenGL is way older then the open source movement and the "open" in its name stands for open standard which is a entirely different story.
Its funny that some youngsters always seem to jump to the conclusion that anything with "open" in its name must be of course open source.
I really really like IntelliJ - I'm using it in my current (Java) project all the time. But Visual Studio with Resharper (from the nice people who brought you IntelliJ) has all the good stuff from IntelliJ and that gives Visual Studio a comfortable edge in my opinion.
IntelliJ does have some useful features I can't seem to find in Visual Studio though - it can visualise WSDL no problem but I can't find the equivalent feature in Visual Studio.
Code in hex? You pussy. Copy con: to file.exe and code with the alt key and numpad.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There are quite a few things in IntelliJ that are not in VS - for example, the awesomeness that is structural code search (it's like language syntax aware regexps, for those not familiar with it).
But I dare say that IntelliJ mainly focuses on editing code. VS lags behind in that department, but in terms of visual designers it's generally ahead.
even if they were proprietary. People do not run them because they are open source. The open source religion is really getting old.
I'm an OpenGL developer and cans say without a shadow of a doubt that Carmack is talking absolute shit. In a nutshell Microsoft uses its monopoly position to push DirectX versions. This gives IHV's something to sell and Ctrl-C Ctrl-V magazines something to yap about. But the truth is OpenGL is still ahead (and can use exactly the same functionality via extensions that Microsoft lock out) even if it isn't so well marketed.
TBH, I'm really surprised Microsoft hasn't been subject to an anti-trust investigation over their treatment of OpenGL. But it's always the same when dealing with bullies. You see the same dynamic with Sarah Palin and Glen Beck. They use their position to control and mouth off to generate the inevitable column inches. So they're "commanding" and "popular"? Not really. Microsoft is the same and Slashdot is just developing Stockholm syndrome with this shill piece. Time to butch up, bitches.
Sure, he has a point, DirectX may have a temporary lead in multithreaded rendering and state management. But OpenGL is moving up fast. The amount of progress in the last year is mind boggling. OpenGL 4 does a huge amount to close the gap with DirectX, and OpenGL remains far superior in at least one crucial way: cross platform support. Tell me John, how are you going to write Rage for iPhone or Android or PS3 with DirectX? And where do you think the money is in the next generation?
Also, it is just plain stupid to devalue the importance of backward compatibility. Kronos did the right thing by taking the deprecation/profile path and declining to submit to the imprudent demands of certain loudmouth game coder monkeys. The next battle in the game world will be fought on turf over which Microsoft has no control whatsoever. Anybody who is stuck with a single platform API at that point is going to lose. I have every confidence that OpenGL multicore support will meet or beat DirectX in a short time. And in the mean time, OpenGL is plenty good enough for me, the possibilities are nowhere near exhausted.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I completely agree with Carmack, but as Tim Sweeney has stated we are gradually moving to a point where the graphics API is irrelevant. As time goes on, more and more of the GPU is exposed to programability and with each release of DirectX and OpenGL (to a lesser extent), the fixed-function pipeline is shrinking. If the trend continues, we will eventually get to the point where everything is abstracted into programs that run on a GPU and buffers... even state management will become a task managed completely by the engine.
If you work on cross-platform console engines, chances are you already wrap the state machine into irrelevance to make up for differences between APIs. Multi-threading is simpler in DirectX, but that is to be expected from an API whose design only requires it to work on a single platform. If you code close to the metal, of course you will see benefits for a specific combination of API / hardware.
OpenGL has traditionally been a monolithic API that tries to maintain legacy support, while accommodating new hardware through extensions. It has a lot of baggage that DirectX does not have, since DirectX routinely drops legacy portions of its API with each major release. Even so, OpenGL comes in multiple flavors now, with the embedded API being much closer to the feature-set modern commodity hardware offers.
Performance wise, Direct3D has held the crown for many years. Portability wise, OpenGL has always been the king. I do not see this changing anytime soon, the two APIs tackle real-time computer graphics from two very different angles. I, like many engine developers, do not have the luxury of committing to a single API, so it is very difficult to effectively exploit the theoretical advantages of either API.
Agreed, there's a lot in IntelliJ but not in VS. But Resharper gives VS most of the IntelliJ goodness. For example, in my copy of Visual Studio structural code search is on the "Resharper/Find/Search with Pattern..." menu.
So I see VS+Resharper as being ahead of IntelliJ.
World Says CryEngine 2 Is Now Better Than idTech 5.
It looks far better
It has physics to speak of
It is more customizable
It does NOT have megatextures!
It looks far, far better
Shit, and I used to like idTech 1,2,3,4, but the Crysis series just blew them out of sight
http://www.incrysis.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=30645
Code on a PC with keyboard? You pussy. I encode bits directly onto a DVD-R using a handheld laser and a microscope.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
The API is great, and honestly that's the least you'd expect for something 100% backed by a company such as Microsoft. Not only Direct 3D, but the whole DirectX is successful because Microsoft writes all the functions one needs to develop a game - higher management is very sensible to that kind of perceived money-saving deals. Which is why Windows has been the favored platform for PC games in the last decade. It's a strategy for Microsoft, and it works, fine. The thing is, I'd expect Carmack to be a little bothered by the fact that Direct3D is, obviously, Windows only. I was under the impression that id Software published supported Linux versions of their game not only because they could, but also as a statement. Apparently I was wrong.
I'm a fan of cross-platform compatibility and I was a huge advocate for OpenGL and open standards - I ditched Windows 98 for a Linux distro when Quake 3 dropped, and I was happy to do so. The statement (late) that John Carmack is making is that DirectX is the refined API to program with, but it doesn't say he has left OpenGL out to pasture (obvious when you see RAGE run on an iPhone).
I'm all for Open standards, but evolution will always take place. I view this statement as a concern for OpenGL rather than an attack; get the API up to speed and the developers will use it.
(DOOM 3 / IDTech4 sucked on my Linux distros and Mac OSX) I have faith that the community will abide.
In Soviet Russia, road forks you!